


Between the Trials

by Candleinthevoid, LullabyHatchet



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Character Development, Fighting, Gen, Headcanon, Multi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 05:07:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26820034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Candleinthevoid/pseuds/Candleinthevoid, https://archiveofourown.org/users/LullabyHatchet/pseuds/LullabyHatchet
Summary: A series of short chapters based around my headcanon of the survivors trying to learn more about the usually silent killers who hunt and kill them. Some chapters will be just general character development scenes that I think work. Currently working on several ideas at once, based on how I like their potential interactions in my head.Huntress | Jake (Complete)Danny | David (On haitus)Legion | Laurie (In progress - almost done)Oni | Rin (In progress)
Kudos: 12





	Between the Trials

Between the trials, at first there had been nowhere to go but the campfire. The one safe place that any of the normal people could still go now in the darkness of the Entity’s realm. All survivors knew the rules by now; so long as the fire stayed lit, you were safe. Once the fire went out, it was time to walk into the depths of the unknown – time for a new trial. Most of the survivors took this time to relax and mentally brace themselves, or to restock on any stashed items, which never seemed to be lost so long as they were left by the fire and not taken into a trial. No survivor used the limited time of guaranteed safety for anything besides recovery.

So, when Jake stood up and left the warmth of the fire, the others asked what the hell was wrong with him. Reasonably so, he figured. From his perspective, he was glad that it was Claudette, Nea and Kate who were at the fire with him this time – a more forceful personality might have shaken his resolve to his decision.

“I want to test something. I’ll probably be back soon anyways, or someone else will show up, right?” Jake stood on the edge of the fire light. Perhaps a killer was just out of sight in the tree line, he couldn’t know now. He was willing to face it regardless for the sake of a testing of this realm.

Nea shook her head and stood up, “No, that’s not the point!” her accent had diminished slightly since her arrival, not terribly long after Jake remembered being lost in the realm of the Entity. The Swedish street artist raised an arm and pointed her hand around the area, at the dark woods surrounding them. “Literally every single one of us has tried to walk into the woods between trials, and nothing ever changes. You know that as well as anyone, so what are you trying to gain here?”

Jake knew it would go like this, so he raised his hands a bit, a placating stance taken towards Nea, “Listen, I just want to try something. I’ll probably just end up wandering back to the fire anyways, so what’s there to lose?” He didn’t want to share his idea with the others yet, as it was a bit of a hopeful dream, if anything. Not the most convincing thoughts when the group were trapped in this place of pain and death.

Nea then points at Jake, but she’s interrupted by Kate from besides her. “Nea, let him go for now. Maybe he needs a little time to think, or he has something to really test out. It’ll be okay one way or another, I’m sure.”

That makes the Swede turn to the musician, her expression an exasperated, yet frustrated eyebrow furrowing as she opens her mouth again, only for Jake to turn heel and begin walking off, the echo of Nea’s irritated retort following him into the darkness.

Jake wandered steadily through the silent woods. His mind was distant, even if he was aware of his surroundings enough to avoid tripping. In a trial, he needed to stay focused, to steel himself always while working with the others. In the quiet darkness, he began to daydream while walking. There had been a time where Jake had wandered from a darkened campfire, reminiscing about his old home after a talk about one of the locations for the trials. The cabin in the woods he’d built himself. When walking, he almost swore that he saw familiar trails in the dark woods, the trees he’d cut down, hunting trails and places he’d placed traps daily for years. But seconds after noticing those details, they seemed to disappear, only for Jake to find himself in a trial, darkness clearing. This time, he wanted to focus on the place itself and see if the same result could happen.

It was several minutes of walking, Jake’s mind wandering as memories of the work he put into building the small home, the effort and pride he had in the success felt every time he had been able to relax in his home, or prepare a meal he’d hunted or grown himself. He found his thoughts drifting to the hunts, the tracking and the slow chases on bigger game that could take days to pay off before he could haul a catch back home. The woods around him subtly changed as he walked, unfocused on those changes, becoming a faint trail, more tree roots and stones buried in the ground, the terrain getting rougher as he followed.

Normally, he would have seen the hint of fire by now, but he instead seems to head down a decline, the trees spreading out a little with the more uneven forest floor breaking them up. The forest resumes on flat ground a little further down, the trail continuing as Jake follows with eyes used to seeing the slight traces of a worn trail through nature. He reaches the floor and sees familiar woods, but this time it’s not reminding him of his home. The air was colder, where normally the temperature was rarely noticeable during a trial, and he stepped further, now focused again as he begins to look around. His first instinct is to search for a sign of a generator or a sacrificial hook, but no signs yet. Instead, he sees a building through the cover of the trees, barely visible at this distance, the moonlight barely making it through the trees before that line.

The entire area seemed so familiar, yet off. Jake wandered forwards and saw a support beam holding up what was almost a roof, which covered a large stock of firewood, with an open window besides it. His approach was slowed, and his face tensed with focus as he kept his eyes sharp to figure out what was going on.

His slow walk kept him by the trees, circling around the outside of the clearing that this building occupied. It was somewhat large, two floors and seemed sturdy built with wood. His mind raced as he tried to figure out where he was, before it clicked when he circled enough to the left side to see into the house, showing a big front doorway, no door intact on it. Inside he saw a table, bare of any decoration or covering. Behind was another open window, and he couldn’t see further inside, but on the second floor was what almost looked like a foyer, an opening that goes out onto the thatch roof.

This was the home of the Huntress. But there were no generators, no hooks, no exit gates. Jake froze briefly, his ears now his focus as he realizes he hadn’t heard the telltale hum of the Killer either. The moment of fear and anxiety passed, Jake slowly stepped into the open, head turning in all directions to ensure no danger was close by. His heart rate was sped up, but he remained calm overall, no sensation of dread in the air as he began his steps to the home in the woods.

He drew closer to entering, lightly reaching out to the doorframe, which is cold and firm to his touch, and he pauses, slowly peeking his head in so he could glance around. With lighting from a makeshift chandelier over the large table and a limited number of lit candles, Jake saw the traces of the Huntress – a tanning rack that had no scent, seemingly left without any treatment, pendants and charms made of bone, carved into unknown symbols mostly with a few that seemed to be crude animal carvings instead. Next to the door was a smaller table, something his mother might’ve put a flower vase on, but in this house a hatchet lay on it instead, a hatchet that Jake was extremely familiar with by now.

Once more, he froze. A part of him was tempted to take the hatchet, to try using it, or even to see if he could bring it back to the campfire. His right hand lingered, halfway reaching for it for several tense, silent seconds before he leaves it alone and instead looks back to the main area of the room, where a tall, towering figure now stood in front of him. She had been silent, entered the room from the side door on his blind side while he was occupied, and now stood in front of him with her much larger axe in both hands, held loosely as her eyes met his, face hidden behind the veiled rabbit mask that Jake had grown to fear.

His pulse immediately was skyrocketing, but he slowly lifted his hands away from her property. The Huntress took one more step towards Jake, and his pulse hit his throat as he prepared for a lot more pain. No hooks, no trial, nothing was stopping both people in this room from using everything they’ve got, and he was fairly certain the woman who still had Russian officer uniforms that she’d taken from their dead bodies would be more than a match for him.

Her silence gave him no comfort, and he flinched as she lifted the axe, only to follow it with his eyes as she doesn’t pull it back to attack, but instead lifts it with one hand just below the axe head, pressing it flat against the wall and letting go. Jake’s surprise is explained slightly as he sees the wall hooks that now hold the lumberjack axe, her hand pulling back and the towering woman quietly turns and steps away, back now to the frozen Jake, who nervously gulps and lets out a breath he didn’t realize he’d held for a good few seconds.

Only once she was nearly past the table towards the side door did Jake find the nerve to speak. “Why? Uh, if you speak English. Why didn’t you kill me?” He watched her, his breathing heavy like he’d just been running, but he stayed still, waiting for her reaction as she stopped near the doorway.

There was a long pause with her not responding before she slowly turns back towards the uncertain man. Her voice was undoubtedly feminine, but it was deep, even when soft spoken with a thick accent. “I hunt. This is no hunt. No need to kill. Take nothing, or I will hunt.” The threat was delivered calmly, with no emotion backing it, more a resolution of a rule. She then stepped away again while Jake still was nodding in response, but she wasn’t gone for long, pulling in a small satchel he'd never seen before. Placing it on the table, the Huntress revealed that she had it filled with bones. It was hard to tell if they were animal or human, but he decided it would be best not to ask for now. She paid him no mind as she then opened a drawer nearby – one that stood where Jake remembered a locker usually was during trials – and produced a small knife from it, not too different from the weapon of choice of the Legion members. That knife then began to cut into the bones, carving small shavings with careful movements while Jake was left to watch.

“What are you making?” Jake’s pulse had finally lowered again, and his curiosity had returned, with a wary tension being so close to the form of one who he’d met his end to many times over. He stepped into the room finally, shoes gently tapping on the wooden floor as he lightly rubbed his hands together, glad he wore his jacket instead of the vest.

The Huntress doesn’t answer yet, standing over the table with the knife and bone, before stopping, putting the knife into her left hand with the bone, her right hand reaching up and taking a grip of her mask, pulling it off and setting it besides the bag on the table. Her face was relatively clear despite the dirt on it, without any signs of disfigurement or clogged pores that Jake would’ve expected. A hardy jawline that curves by the chin, cheeks slim without being taut between her bones, rounding her face slightly more than her powerful body would suggest. Her eyebrows were unkept, bushy brown hair over dark blue eyes that had been hidden in the shadows of the mask. Her hair was pulled back and fell just over shoulder height, unevenly cut as she resumed working on the bone, the carving at an angle that Jake couldn’t see from. “Reminder of home. The hunt. Sometimes totems. Always gone when I come home.” Her knife hand gestures to the trinkets on the small table that Jake had seen earlier, the crude figures and symbols roughly cut. “Those always stay. Made when I was child. Taught by mother.”

Jake’s attention then is drawn to the many questions the Huntress had opened an opportunity to ask about. He knew she spoke English, at least enough to communicate. The trinkets were more curious, and he began to wonder further, but he wanted to stick to one topic for now, and the most interesting one for him happened to be the towering Killer who now carved bones in front of him. She was using tools he’d never seen her with, doing something he’d never seen any Killer do, and he was struck with how little he knew and understood about the people who were put in place to endlessly chase and kill him and these seemingly randomly selected survivors. “I, uh, okay,” Jake stumbled before he even could continue, a part of him stunned by the fact he’s about to try having a conversation with a Killer, but he musters the courage as he clears his throat, “Can we talk for a bit? I just want to know more since I have the chance.”

The Huntress stops for a moment, turning her unwashed face towards the man who chose to abandon civilization to take his life to the wilderness. Her eyes met his, and while his were a mixture of uncertainty, curiosity, and fear, she had a calm coldness that was inscrutable. Her hands lowered the object of her work, and she lets the knife and bones are left on the table. “Why? Why do you want to know about me?” Her voice doesn’t get lighter to indicate the question, her tone staying flat as she almost makes it a statement at Jake instead of a question.

“You and so many others hunt us down in trials, and I find you for once not in a trial. You have me off guard, nothing to hinder you, and you leave me alone. You speak in English and call me by name, but I don’t even know yours. I don’t know anything about you, but now I know you only kill for the hunt. Even if it doesn’t change anything in the trials, I want to know you and the others a little bit if I can.” Jake stepped a little closer, placing his hands on the table, now only a couple feet from the unmasked Huntress. “I didn’t know your eye color before now. Maybe it doesn’t matter that much to others, but it does to me, I guess.”

The woman took a long breath, the suspenders holding up the torn half-skirt stretched faintly by her chest pushing out with the inhalation before she turns away and starts to walk. At first, Jake deflates a bit, thinking she’d simply decided to leave the building, but she reaches into an alcove under the second floor, one of the places that the Entity’s basement could be, but now it was a place for more firewood mostly, but in a corner she reaches and takes out two chairs, wooden and sturdy though worn out. She then places those chairs at the table, across from one another.

“Sit. This will take little time, but longer in English.” Her words gave Jake a little hope for his interest. He couldn’t explain why he wanted to know more, but this was a chance he was given that he didn’t expect to have to begin with and had no idea if he’d ever get again. He sat down, and the Huntress sat on the other side of the table, the closest to seeing eye-to-eye that she’d ever been with him as he nods. “I lived here as child with mother. She taught me to live. To hunt. A hunt went wrong. She died. I grew up alone. Protected woods from…” She pauses, then her eyebrows furrow, before she raises her arms, one hand by her face, the other extended outwards as she then shook her hands upwards and back into position a couple times, “Bang bang. They brought fire and bang. Destroy woods. I stop them, they come back.” Jake didn’t respond, listening and not wanting to interrupt as she then pauses, trying to remember, her dark eyes glancing at the large woodcutting axe where it still hangs on the wall. She holds that silence for a while, the candles and permanent moonlight all that illuminates the room. “I made the woods quiet again. Then, the woods became dark.” Her left-hand gestures towards the walls and windows as she huffs out what Jake almost thought was a frustrated sigh. “Night is long now, and nothing is left to hunt but you.”

Jake takes in her finishing statement, starting to understand the massive woman he’d fled from countless times. In the trials she showed no mercy, but ultimately, she seemed far more human than he – well, than any of the survivors had really given her credit for. He found his throat dry for a moment before he clears it and speaks up. “Do you enjoy the hunting, Huntress?”

Her eyes meet his. The cold depths of the blue meeting the hazel reflecting the candlelight. The silence feels tense, and he’s briefly terrified that he somehow upset her before she takes a deliberately slow breath and breaks silence once again. “Anna. I am Anna. You are Jake. Not Huntress and Hook Breaker.” Jake’s breath all but shook his jacket with his relief, but he relaxed once more, nodding in acknowledgment. “The hunt was how I found life. Death to feed life. A cycle. Now I hunt intelligent beasts. Ones who learn and adapt. A trap I set one day will not work the next. The hunt is greatest now more than ever.” She then places her hands on the table, and the expression Jake sees isn’t one of excitement when talking about an interest, she seems neutral, almost indifferent, “But even with always changing and different, these hunt are feeling same. Repetitive. I cannot set small trap for rabbit. I cannot leave for days to track elk. I cannot store meat for winter. All this, small things of every day. Now they are gone, and I have much time to do nothing.” She states frankly, then one of her hands turns palm up and gestures to the bones and blade set aside. “So I carve. But all carvings gone after trial. Only old ones stay.”

She uses the same hand to draw Jake’s attention to the small, crude carvings he’d noticed before, among candles that never went out, decorations that always were visible. “Carving from childhood. When mother gone. Now always here, even if I move them.” Her voice gives no indication of her feelings, while Jake’s mind was racing. If she was always carving, but those carvings never stayed, what does that really mean in the end? Those carvings never showed up in the trials, at least not as far as he’d seen. Only the childhood ones, but they never meant anything for the trials themselves, unlike totems. “More to ask?”

“If this is your home, is it possible to go to a survivor’s home?” Jake figured he might know the answer, but maybe one of the Killers would have more insight into how things work in the Fog. “Or to the homes of the other Killers?” He focused on her again, watching the inexpressive face regarding him.

Her response was a shrug, something he didn’t expect her to be able to respond with. “Sometimes others come here. The children once. The trapper. Most leave before long. I do not look for others.”

Jake was trying to figure out how he’d tell others about this information. Most probably wouldn’t believe him, and others wouldn’t care much. After all, who would willingly go looking to interact with the killers? He couldn’t deny it, that was the logical reasoning of it, but something in him wanted to learn more, to explore and find out about the other side trapped in the realm of the Entity. The things that set them apart between each other, the reasons the Entity chose them, there were so many questions he was starting to form-

“Jake. Ask more or leave.” Her voice cut through his questions, and he blinked out of his own distractions, asking the first question that popped into his head.

“What’s the song you sing all the time?” The moment he mentioned song, he realized his mistake as her hands clenched into fists at the table, forearms on the edge as her jaw hardened. Jake saw himself reflected in her eyes, and he braced himself. A moment passed, filled with heavy tension that had disappeared without Jake noticing. Now he felt his heart in his ears, aware of how quickly she could reach for her axes by the door, only to remember the knife besides her hand on the table.

Then she exhaled, her eyes never betraying the slightest emotions as she gestured to the door. “Leave.”

Jake nodded, a long sigh of relief leaving his lips as he stood up and walked to the door offered. He paused by it, looking back and seeing her eyes still locked on him, head turned to follow but the rest of her unmoved. “Um, Anna? Thank you. It was kind of… nice to be able to talk like this, even if that’s weird. It’s definitely weird, but I stand by that.” He offered a bit of a smile, but it was not returned in kind, met only with the icy, unchanging expression of the unmasked Huntress.

“This does not change how trial goes. I still hunt you when we are summoned. Survival means awareness. Even if being hunted by known person.” Her tone was decidedly icy with that warning, but her eyes hadn’t changed. They remained almost analyzing of him, watching every muscle tense and relax. He never felt fully safe under the predatory gaze, and Jake nodded quickly, a lump staying in his throat even with each attempt to swallow it down.

“Of course, right. I’ll be seeing you… one way or another, right?” Jake’s last attempt at a lighthearted joke was met with silence, which caused him to clear his throat, nod quietly and then simply turn his back to her, his neck tensing as he walked past the empty doorframe, ready for an attack or warning hatchet to follow him. He passed the threshold, the two axes on his right side as he glanced once more at them, able to see them far better than usually when they were in a trial, before he was out in the open air again, the chill still permanently set in these woods, lightly tingling his exposed face. He looked back after a few paces from the door, and the Huntress had donned her mask once more, staring at him with black eyes set in the center of a worn, tired rabbit façade. Jake looked forwards again, making his way to the tree line and soon the fog surrounded him again.

**Author's Note:**

> If you have something to bring up, feedback or otherwise, let me know and I'll gladly hear it. Character suggestions, ideas for events or themes, I'm always looking for inspiration!


End file.
